As expected, ECB President Mario Draghi announced yesterday an “aggressive package of quantitative easing measures” that had the immediate impact of sending stock and bond prices higher (at least for an hour or so). Unfortunately, says Breakingviews, he may be “encouraging excessive risk taking without being able to increase inflation” – NYTimes

Never mind the recent SEC enforcement action against S&P’s primary economic modeler or Moody’s $130 million settlement with CalPERS—both of which emerged just this week—the Journal points out that despite the role ratings agencies played in 2008’s economic crisis, the big 3 firms are “stronger than ever” – WSJ

Even as the Dow has bounced back a bit in recent weeks and jobs had a mammoth February, 2016 continues to stymie hedge funds, who have ridden a terrible 2015 into more of the same so far – NYTimes

Federal district court judge William Pauley is letting hedge-fund founder David Ganek’s lawsuit against SDNY USA Preet Bharara and the FBI agents who investigated Ganek’s Level Global Investors proceed, at least for now. Ganek alleges that Bharara and the feds violated his constitutional rights with their 2010 raid of his offices and fabricated evidence to obtain their warrant – WSJ and Law360 and NYTimes

America’s home values have recovered an incredible $7 trillion in value since their low in 2009, and just 8.5% of properties now have negative equity – Bloomberg

A new paper out from the National Bureau of Economic Research states unequivocally that Wall Street is doing its swaps accounting wrong—all wrong—by “masking the funding cost of their swap desks by applying the cost . . . to the value of those positions that they report” – Bloomberg

China has a new approach for managing its corporate debt burden—encouraging companies to use stock to pay overdue loans.  But while the plan could offer temporary relief for banks, Cornell economist Eswar Prasad warns that the program “amounts to a sleight of hand that beautifies bank balance sheets but hardly comes to grips with the basic problems of bad loans, distorted incentive in the banking and state enterprise systems, and weak financial regulation.”  Not exactly sugarcoating it there, are we, Eswar – NYTimes

The SEC’s expecting its record-setting enforcement spree in 2015 to continue in the new year, especially as “new data analytics tools make it easier to detect insider trading and financial reporting fraud” – Law360

With Canada’s young new PM in the midst of an official state visit to Washington, it’s worth looking at the trade relationship between the US and its neighbor to the north—which has, for the first time, swung to Canada as creditor – Bloomberg

Stephen takes the #BestSchoolDay concept a bit further than other celebs – LateShow

Have a great weekend.